September 3, 2025 • 26 mins
#016 and Part 6 of Build A Candle Business series.
**This special series is brought to you by ToAuto Wax Melters. Our listeners will get a special deal at checkout when they use this link. **
Wondering why visitors browse your candle website but don't buy? The difference between attracting traffic and converting sales often comes down to specific website elements that build trust and create seamless shopping experiences.
Sabastian Garsnett, who scaled his candle company to $1.4 million in just three years, breaks down the 10 essential components every candle website needs to convert browsers into buyers. These aren't just theoretical concepts—they're battle-tested strategies from someone who's mastered the art of online candle sales.
Your website needs to communicate what you sell within three seconds of someone landing on your homepage. This means clear, compelling imagery above the fold and product photography that helps customers imagine your candles in their space. Since shoppers can't smell through screens, your product pages must work overtime—painting vivid scent stories while providing all the technical details buyers need to make confident decisions.
The modern candle shopper expects convenience at every turn. With 85% of customers shopping on mobile devices, a mobile-first design approach is non-negotiable. Your navigation should be intuitive, your payment options diverse, and your shipping policies competitive with major retailers. Sebastian reveals exactly how he structures shipping to compete with Amazon while maintaining profitability.
Trust signals make all the difference when asking strangers to enter their credit card information. From properly implemented legal pages to custom domains, branded emails, and an authentic about page—each element reassures potential customers they're making a safe purchase from real people who stand behind their products.
The episode includes valuable bonus tips like setting up abandoned cart emails (which recover significant lost revenue), integrating Instagram feeds to showcase real customers, and implementing live chat to answer questions in real time. Sebastian even shares the benchmark conversion rate for candle websites so you can measure your performance.
Ready to transform your candle website into a sales-generating machine? Download the free checklist mentioned in this episo
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In this episode I'm going to discuss 10 must-haves
for a high converting candlewebsite.
So, whether you're usingShopify which of course, we
would highly recommend or you'reusing another platform to sell
your candles on, you want tomake sure that you are doing the
most that you possibly can sothat it is actually high
converting, because it's onething to get traffic to your
(00:21):
website.
It's an entirely another thingto get them to actually check
out, purchase and put money intoyour bank account.
So in this episode we are goingto discuss 10 must-haves for a
high converting candle website.
Also, as a thank you for tuningin, in the show notes below I
put a completely free checklistof all the things we're going to
talk about today, so you canopen that up and then you can
(00:43):
compare that to your website nowto see what you might be
missing and how you can betteroptimize your website.
So, completely free, you cangrab that in the show notes
below as well.
Now, if you're just tuning in,this is week six on our journey
to start a completely new candlebusiness.
So I'm Sebastian Garznett, theco-founder of Garznett Beacon
Candle Company and the founderof Candle Business Pro, where we
(01:04):
help makers go pro, and westarted, six weeks ago now, a
journey, starting a completelynew candle business.
So we've grown Garcinet BeaconCandle Company to a little over
one point four million dollarsin the last three and a half
years and we wanted to startcompletely from scratch.
It is a completely differentniche, a completely different
target audience, a new,different customer demographics
(01:27):
that we are wanting to sellthese products to.
We have different values,different mission.
Everything is completelyseparate in this new candle
business.
So we're taking you on thejourney with us, and this is
week six, so you can go back andlisten to episodes one through
five to see where we got towhere we are today.
So today we're going to talkabout those 10 must haves that
(01:51):
all websites need to have tomaximize the chances of you
converting those lookers intobuyers.
Before we go too deep into this,I do want to give a big shout
out to Tuato.
Tuato Axiom Altruist haspartnered with us on this series
.
We can't thank them enough.
They are absolutely fantastic.
And for you to be tuning intothis episode, there is an
exclusive link in the show notesbelow for you to save an
(02:12):
additional discount at checkout.
So check out Two Auto Melters.
We've been big fans of them.
We were doing videos about TwoAuto Melters on YouTube for
quite some time, way before wepartnered with them on this
series, just because we have somuch faith in their products and
trust that they are alwaysgoing to put their customers
first.
So check them out at2AutoXMilterscom.
(02:33):
But again, use the show noteslink below to get yourself an
additional discount at checkout.
Okay, so let's get into this.
So, number one the first thingthat your website needs to have
is a clear, compelling homepage.
Your homepage should show whatyou sell within three seconds.
Seriously, if someone lands onyour site and doesn't know what
(02:54):
your business does or who it'sfor, they're going to be gone.
It's called a bounce.
Use a simple hero image, so aheadline that speaks to your
customers, and make sure thatyou've got a shop.
Now, button above the fold.
You've got to keep it clean,keep it focused.
So now, above the fold is thearea when you land on a website,
whether on a desktop or on amobile that when you land on it
(03:17):
you don't have to scroll, soeverything you see front and
center without having to swipeup or scroll.
That is above the fold and thatshould tell the entire story of
your brand or what you'retrying to sell to them right
away.
This is a great place to haveyour best images, or if you are
promoting something, if you'reinto the fall season or you're
(03:38):
into the Christmas season,whatever you're promoting,
whatever you're wanting to drivebusiness towards, should be
right there, front and center,above the fold, when someone
lands on your website.
So they know very clearly whatyou're selling and you need to
have your imagery so that theycan imagine themselves using the
product.
Just having a photo of yourcandles with the background
(04:02):
removed is not going to cut it.
That is not going to give thema clear image of how they're
going to be using your products.
So spend some time, maybe evena little bit of money, on your
photography.
Now we actually just did aworkshop inside.
When I say we, chad just did aworkshop inside of the inner
circle for our members where heshows you how he does our
(04:25):
photography and that includesjust using your simple iPhone or
any phone nowadays can do yourphotography and how he edits all
of that inside of Canva so thatyou can have very consistent
images.
One of the things that kind ofis a pet peeve of mine when I'm
looking at websites for peopleis that they you know they have
(04:48):
five, 10 different candles ofthe exact same collection and
they've taken images of all ofthem.
But some are closer, some arefarther back, so the depth on
them isn't consistent, sothey're kind of all over the
place and the lighting is goingto be a little bit off.
So work on having consistentphotography on your homepage as
well and throughout your website.
So that is number two.
(05:09):
That's going to be that greatproduct photography.
Your photos do matter.
They need to be clear, theyneed to be well lit.
You have to have highresolution.
You can't just do one angle.
Think about taking images fromthe front, from the side, from
the top.
Think about taking images fromthe front, from the side, from
the top.
If you have a lid, you know,have the lid on to show them
that it comes with the lid.
Have the lid off so that theycan see what it looks like
(05:29):
without it.
If they're candles, candlesshould be lit.
I would have a flame on there.
Now we don't go in light all ofour candles just for the
photography.
That is part of what we doinside of our editing.
So if you're part of the innercircle, you can come in there
and see how we edit all of ourphotos.
Um, it makes it really easy todo.
You can do that just inside ofCanva or Photoshop or any of
those other softwares.
(05:50):
I like to use Canva.
I'm not too tech savvy, butCanva is all that we need to
have there.
Um, now your images should bearound um 2000 pixels wide, but
under uh 500 kilobytes uh, asfar as size goes.
Now, the reason for that is wewant them to load as fast as
possible, so your images, ifthey're too large, are going to
(06:10):
slow down your website.
So you want to have the clarityand you want them to have high
resolution, but you want thatfile size to be smaller so you
can dive into.
Shopify has plenty of resourceson their website just about
product photography and whattheir recommendations are to
have the best speeds for yourwebsite, and the photography
(06:32):
plays a huge part in that.
You also want to always makesure that you are using alt text
, so alt text is great foraccessibility For people that
can't see your images.
The alt text will help them,through technologies, to know
what is on those pages.
So it is pretty important.
It's very important to us tohave the alt text spelled out.
(06:54):
It's also going to be reallygood for your SEO.
That's going to raise your SEOscore higher so that you are
then going to be ranking higheron Google results, all right.
So number three is going to beyour product pages need to build
confidence.
So this is where your customersdecide if they're buying.
You got to make sure that everyproduct page has full details
(07:16):
scent notes, burn times,ingredients, size or size
variance.
If you're selling multiple,obviously you need to have your
prices on there.
You need to add a story or avibe to the scent, right.
You need to connect, not justvisually, but you have to kind
of tell the story about thatscent.
We're selling candles, right,and people aren't able to smell
(07:38):
them through your website, butwe got to get as close as
possible to that.
So your product pages, whereyou're going to have those
descriptions, is going to bereally important.
You're also going to want toturn on your product reviews.
That is going to build some ofthe trust factors on those
product pages.
Social proof is going to go along ways.
(07:58):
If I went on a website, I don'tsee any social proof.
I don't know if anyone's everbought from this company before.
It's going to make it me prettyleery about that brand or that
specific product.
All right.
So number four is going to beeasy site navigation.
So now don't overthink yourmenu.
Oftentimes I will see thesemassive menus on the top of
(08:21):
websites.
Keep it really simple.
Uh, have you know a homepage?
You know, or home button?
Now, if you're building aShopify, the logo will be at the
top and it's just commonknowledge these days that if you
click on that logo, that'sgoing to take you back to the
homepage of a website.
So don't have a separate tabthat says home to take you back
(08:42):
home.
People know now just to clickon the logo at the top of any
website or on any website pageand that's going to take you
back to the main page.
So no need to put a home tab onthe menu of your website.
But you do want to have a shop,you do want to have an about?
Uh, you do want to have FAQs?
Now, I'd put those at thebottom.
I would also put a contact atthe bottom.
(09:03):
People want to make sure thatthey are able to reach you if
they have any problems or anyissues.
Um, they may also just havequestions in advance.
So having that FAQ is going tobe important.
Now what I like to do is, undermy shop, I then start breaking
down the collection so I don't,across the top have, let's say,
spring, summer, fall, winter,custom private label.
(09:26):
I don't have all of ourdifferent collections across the
top.
I will have shop.
I keep our homepage very, veryclean.
You click on shop and then it'sgoing to drop down and then
it's going to start breaking itup into collections.
Or they can shop by scent.
There's a lot of different waysthey can shop our website, but
when they're first on ourwebsite, you don't want to
overwhelm them and make it looklike there's too many options
(09:48):
that they're going to get lost,right?
You want to make it very, veryclean to shop.
So the other thing that you cando is add additional product
types.
So we have under shop we havecandles, but we also have wax
melts and then we have roomsprays, and so we don't have all
of those across the top becauseit would just make it very
overwhelming.
So under shop is where we startbreaking it down.
(10:10):
Number five is going to bemobile.
First design Now, with ourbrand, garza and Beacon, 85% of
our visitors visit us on mobile,so they are on their cell
phones when they are coming toour website.
So we have to think aboutbuilding this website out that
is mobile friendly.
So you're going to want to havebuttons that are the right size
(10:30):
, that they're tappable.
You know, when you're inShopify building out your
website, you can choosedifferent size options,
different sizes for your buttons, different sizes for your text.
Be sure that you preview yourwebsite on mobile and make sure
that that is what you care aboutmore than the desktop version.
So that's one thing to thinkabout is we build our website on
(10:54):
our computer, on our desktop,on our laptop.
Maybe even some of you will dolike on an iPad, something with
a larger screen, but use thepreview that Shopify has is at
the very top in the right corner.
When you're building out yourwebsite, it's going to have what
looks like an image of acomputer monitor and then a cell
phone next to it.
That gives you the twodifferent viewing options.
Click on the cell phone andthen you'll see what it's going
(11:16):
to look like on a mobile device.
And if there's things that needto be changed, there's a few
things that you can do, separatefor mobile versus desktop, and
one of those is going to be yourimages.
So for our product images, weuse the same.
We use the same for both,because we're using, like,
square images for our store, butwith your, with your hero
(11:37):
images, which is like the frontpage of your website at the top,
we will have two differentimages.
So it will allow us to use aimage that is desktop specific
and then an image that is mobilespecific, and you're going to
want that.
If you have a hero image thathas a lot going on, if you're
going to be having text on there, be sure you look at it on
mobile version to make sure thattext on the desktop isn't going
(12:00):
off the side or running off thebottom.
So some things there to thinkabout.
So your buttons should betappable.
You should be able to click onthem just fine, not that they're
too small.
Where you got to, you got totab, just right.
You want to make sure that theycan tab it really easy.
The text should be large enoughthat it's easy to read, and
then your checkout should bereally easy to go through as
well.
Oftentimes people don't go andlook at the design of the
(12:22):
checkout page.
They just leave it at thedefault.
There's a lot of things thatcan kind of be overwhelming
there, so just think aboutmaking it mobile first optimized
.
So, number six we want to set upour payment and our shipping
properly.
So you want to make sure thatyou're accepting multiple
payment options credit cards,paypal, apple Pay and you also
want to have clear shippingterms.
(12:44):
Now, for us, the way we do itis we do free shipping at $99
and we have that as a banner,and then we also do $5 flat rate
.
It's just we're competing withAmazon, we're competing with
Macy's and all these other bigbox stores that do a free
shipping threshold, so we wantto be sure that we're
competitive in there.
If I'm selling someone my $18candle, if I'm selling them an
(13:08):
$18 candle and it's shipping toCalifornia, they're not going to
want to spend $12 to get itthere.
They're just not.
So what am I going to do?
I, california, they're notgoing to want to spend $12 to
get it there.
They're just not.
So what am I going to do?
I'm going to eat some of thatby offering $5 flat rate.
If you're part of the innercircle, I walk you through
exactly how we have that set up.
In fact, if you're in the innercircle, we have an entire
walkthrough of how I build outour Shopify store.
(13:28):
So if you're interested in theinner circle, just the workshop
on building a Shopify storewould be certainly worth it as
well, and, of course, thephotography one that we spoke of
earlier.
But make sure that you haveplenty of payment options for
people, so credit cards, paypal,apple Pay.
You need to have your shippingclearly defined.
If you're charging them fullprice for shipping, that's
(13:51):
probably hindering a lot of yoursales.
So just keep that in mind.
And if you are going to have athreshold where you get to free
shipping, make sure you'readvertising it, because that's a
great promotion.
You don't want to bury thedetails, you want to be just
clear, upfront.
I like to have that banner onthe top of my homepage, so when
someone lands on my website, itsays what the free shipping
(14:12):
threshold is.
So while they're looking aroundand shopping, they know right
away what that number they needto get to if they want to take
advantage of that free shippingthreshold.
Number seven is going to belegal pages that build trust.
Oftentimes people will forgetto complete their privacy policy
as terms of service, yourrefund policy, your shipping
(14:35):
policy.
Shopify has templates to getyou started.
Don't skip out on doing these,not just because they protect
you legally, but because theysignal to your customers that
you're a real business.
If I go to a website and when Iscroll to the bottom, I want to
make sure they have a contactso I can reach out to them if
they, if I have any issues whenI'm buying from them.
But if I don't see a refundpolicy or their terms of service
(14:58):
or privacy policy, that's goingto concern me that they haven't
taken the steps that mostbusinesses do take, so don't be
one of those.
That doesn't complete all ofthese different things.
Again, shopify has all thesefor you, where you just fill in
the blanks and you can justupdate it according to what your
policies are, so that's very,very easy to do.
(15:19):
Number eight is going to be tohave an email signup and a
branded email platform.
I actually talked about theemail platforms in week five of
this series, that you need to goout and get a email service
provider, such as like a Googleworkspace, so that you can have
an email address such as helloat yourbrandcom.
You don't want to haveyourbrandatgmailcom right, so,
(15:43):
for instance with mine.
It would be info atwithoutbrandcom or info at
garznetbeaconcom.
I don't want it to be likegarznetbeaconcandocompany at
gmailcom.
It's going to build trust byhaving a business email address.
You're going to want to havethat, and then you want to start
collecting emails right away,have a pop-up where you are
(16:06):
collecting people's emailaddresses.
Generally you're going to dothis in exchange for a discount
and the discount has to belucrative.
I would start out at a minimumof 25% off their first order so
that they give you their emailaddress.
And then you're going to wantto have your automations already
set up and running.
So you need to have at leastone email in that welcome
(16:27):
sequence because that's going tobe the email that's sending
them that first order discount.
Now you can use Klaviyo.
You can also use other types ofautomated email sequences, but
you can just use Shopify.
You can just use Shopify'semail.
It has gotten so much betterover the last couple of years to
where you can.
(16:48):
Now, in fact, we do anotherworkshop inside of the inner
circle where it's all aboutemail marketing and we set up
like seven different emails.
So you have that initial emailthat goes out once someone gives
you their email address andthen the next day we send them
an email that talks about oh,come and follow us on social
media.
There's another one that isgoing to be set up to
automatically send out emailsfor whenever they make a
(17:10):
purchase, so that you can startcollecting reviews.
So make sure that you have allof your email signups that pop
up on your website ready to goand that you have that branded
email address that they're goingto be sending or they're going
to be receiving those emailsfrom.
So that's going to be importantfor you to have on your website
as well.
Now on to number nine SEOfriendly, story driven product
(17:32):
descriptions are going to bereally important.
Of course, because of SEO, youwant to make sure that you have
a keyword rich productdescription.
Now, we did talk about theproduct description a little bit
earlier on when we talked aboutthe product pages, but the
descriptions themselves are soimportant.
This is such a big one.
Your product description shouldactually paint a picture.
(17:52):
Just think about it that way.
Don't just tell people what thescent notes are going to be.
Talk about how it feels, whatit's going to remind people of
who they would be buying it for.
Use your keywords naturally,such as soy candles or gift for
blank, but you got to keep ithuman.
You can use AI, chat, gpt, youcan use assistants to write your
(18:16):
product descriptions, but don'tjust copy and paste those in.
It's not going to fly, it's notgoing to work.
People know when something'swritten that has a human element
to it or if it's all just AIwritten.
So make sure that it'scompletely natural.
Still, you don't want to dowhat's called keyword stuff and
that just means throwing a tonof keywords.
(18:37):
You know I don't want to say anatural candle, highly scented
candle, a candle for her, candlefor him, candle for them Like.
You don't want to just throwall these keywords into a
product description.
That's just not how it works.
I have videos on SEO that youcan go back and check out as
well.
That's one of the biggestdrivers for the business we
receive is making sure that wehave SEO optimized product
(19:00):
descriptions.
Make sure that they tell a story.
When they click on theirproduct, they're already
interested in it.
Now the story that you tell onthat product page in that
description should sell it.
They're interested in it.
Now you got to sell it to themand that's where you do that.
All right.
So number 10 is custom domainand trust signal.
So you got to have a customdomain, you've got to own a
(19:21):
website.
So for us, likeGarcinetBeaconcom or
WithoutBrandcom those are theones that we are selling candles
on you don't want it to be likeGarcinetBeaconmyshopifycom,
because that's what it's goingto be.
When you first open up aShopify store, they're going to
give you a domain, but you wantto go out and buy a domain and
(19:42):
connect them so that it takesout that myshopifycom out of
that website address.
Then you're also going to wantto have a lot of trust badges on
your website, not just at thecheckout but also on your
website.
The trust badges are going tobe things such as secure
checkout or fast shipping oreasy returns, handmade goods all
(20:06):
of those that you'll see onalmost every website.
That generally going to bethroughout the website, but
usually towards the bottom.
There they're going to be, likeyou know, circle icons.
Have them on your homepage,have them on your product pages
and also have them at checkout.
You just want to keep reassuringthe customer on your website
that doesn't know you or yourbrand that this is a safe place
to shop.
(20:26):
So make sure you're goingthrough the extra steps of
adding those to your websitethat doesn't know you or your
brand, that this is a safe placeto shop.
So make sure you're goingthrough the extra steps of
adding those to your website.
You also want to include anabout page with a photo and a
story, just so that they feelmore comfortable buying from you
.
In this day and age, we arevery cautious of who we are
spending money with, making surethat, whether the story aligns
or the mission aligns, or thevalues, whatever it might be.
(20:53):
So talk about you, talk aboutyour brand, talk about your why.
That's going to incentivizepeople to.
It's going to build more trustwith them so that they're going
to feel confident in theirpurchase.
Now let's go over some bonustips for you Now.
If you want to get our list ofour top 10 here that I've shared
today, grab that in thecomments below.
So if you want to go the extramile, here's a few ideas.
Add that announcement bar atthe top of your page to do
(21:15):
either free shipping, promos,new launches, whatever you have
going on.
Just throw that up there.
It should be on everyone'shomepage, for sure.
You can also usually put thaton your product pages or,
depending on the theme andShopify you're using, you can
put it throughout your websiteas well.
So having that scrollingannouncement bar can be really
handy.
Another thing is your Instagramfeed.
(21:35):
If you are using Instagram,then you can actually have your
Instagram feed filter into yourwebsite so that people will
build trust off of knowing, oh,they are a legit brand.
I see people posting onInstagram and showing up right
onto their website, so that'sgoing to be a really good trust
factor and it's also going toshow like customers using your
products but they're reallygoing to like.
(21:57):
Another one is going to be setup abandoned cart emails.
We get a lot of sales fromabandoned cart emails.
It's very easy to just set itup and forget about it.
You can do it in Shopifydirectly.
You can also do it in Klaviyoor whatever email service
provider you're using.
Essentially, what it is issomeone is on your website,
they're shopping around, theyput stuff in their cart and then
(22:18):
they decide not to buy rightnow.
Whether it was because of theshipping was too high, whether
they want to shop around otherpages, or maybe they're just
unsure they leave your website.
You should then have an emailthat's going to trigger to go
out to them saying hey, comeback.
You know these things are stillin your cart.
Believe me, it works.
We get a lot of sales from ourabandoned cart emails working
(22:39):
for us.
And another tip for you considerhaving just a basic live chat
tool.
Now, that doesn't mean you haveto sit there at your website
all day long.
You can have a live chat tool.
In fact, shopify has that.
What's called Shopify inbox iswhat they have to, where someone
can start a conversation withyou there or ask questions.
A little contact form will popup.
(23:00):
They can ask a question andthen you'll get a notification
and you can hop on there torespond to them.
That's going to help save a lotof sales.
When people aren't sure aboutthey're going to have questions
about all kinds of things,whether it's about the scent or
whether it's about where youship to.
People are going to have lotsof questions as they're shopping
, and if there's an easy way forthem to get the answer from you
(23:21):
, then having that is going tobe fantastic.
And then what I do is, whenpeople ask questions through our
contact, I then will add themto our FAQs so that the next
person shopping on our websiteif they have the same question,
they might be able to find theanswer under the FAQs, which
would then slow down the amountof times they have to reach out
(23:41):
to us directly.
It gets them an answer rightaway and, hopefully, on to
building out their cart andmaking an order with us.
Hopefully this episode has beenhelpful for you.
Now, generally speaking onShopify, shopify tells us that
the average conversion rate is3%.
So meaning, for every hundredpeople that go to your website,
(24:02):
3% should convert into customers.
Now, this is going to be coldtraffic.
This isn't going to be likeyour repeat customers coming
back over and over again.
Cold traffic should convert atabout three percent.
If you're doing better thanthat or worse than that, let me
know in the comments below whatyour conversion rate is.
It's an easy metrics to seeright inside of the admin of
your Shopify store.
(24:22):
Also, don't forget, I have alist of all of these things to
do a checklist for you in thecomments below.
It's completely free.
You can download that from thelink below.
If you have any questions,reach out to us.
We love to help you out alongthe way.
Put your questions in thecomments below as well, and next
week we're going to dive intobuilding out some other
marketing strategies for thisnew brand and I'll show you a
(24:44):
little bit of sneak peek ofexactly what we're doing to
start creating a buzz aroundthis new brand.
So thanks for tuning in today.
Have a fantastic rest of yourday.
In this episode I'm going to discuss 10 must-haves
for a high converting candlewebsite.
So, whether you're usingShopify which of course, we
would highly recommend or you'reusing another platform to sell
your candles on, you want tomake sure that you are doing the
most that you possibly can sothat it is actually high
converting, because it's onething to get traffic to your
(00:21):
website.
It's an entirely another thingto get them to actually check
out, purchase and put money intoyour bank account.
So in this episode we are goingto discuss 10 must-haves for a
high converting candle website.
Also, as a thank you for tuningin, in the show notes below I
put a completely free checklistof all the things we're going to
talk about today, so you canopen that up and then you can
(00:43):
compare that to your website nowto see what you might be
missing and how you can betteroptimize your website.
So, completely free, you cangrab that in the show notes
below as well.
Now, if you're just tuning in,this is week six on our journey
to start a completely new candlebusiness.
So I'm Sebastian Garznett, theco-founder of Garznett Beacon
Candle Company and the founderof Candle Business Pro, where we
(01:04):
help makers go pro, and westarted, six weeks ago now, a
journey, starting a completelynew candle business.
So we've grown Garcinet BeaconCandle Company to a little over
one point four million dollarsin the last three and a half
years and we wanted to startcompletely from scratch.
It is a completely differentniche, a completely different
target audience, a new,different customer demographics
(01:27):
that we are wanting to sellthese products to.
We have different values,different mission.
Everything is completelyseparate in this new candle
business.
So we're taking you on thejourney with us, and this is
week six, so you can go back andlisten to episodes one through
five to see where we got towhere we are today.
So today we're going to talkabout those 10 must haves that
(01:51):
all websites need to have tomaximize the chances of you
converting those lookers intobuyers.
Before we go too deep into this,I do want to give a big shout
out to Tuato.
Tuato Axiom Altruist haspartnered with us on this series
.
We can't thank them enough.
They are absolutely fantastic.
And for you to be tuning intothis episode, there is an
exclusive link in the show notesbelow for you to save an
(02:12):
additional discount at checkout.
So check out Two Auto Melters.
We've been big fans of them.
We were doing videos about TwoAuto Melters on YouTube for
quite some time, way before wepartnered with them on this
series, just because we have somuch faith in their products and
trust that they are alwaysgoing to put their customers
first.
So check them out at2AutoXMilterscom.
(02:33):
But again, use the show noteslink below to get yourself an
additional discount at checkout.
Okay, so let's get into this.
So, number one the first thingthat your website needs to have
is a clear, compelling homepage.
Your homepage should show whatyou sell within three seconds.
Seriously, if someone lands onyour site and doesn't know what
(02:54):
your business does or who it'sfor, they're going to be gone.
It's called a bounce.
Use a simple hero image, so aheadline that speaks to your
customers, and make sure thatyou've got a shop.
Now, button above the fold.
You've got to keep it clean,keep it focused.
So now, above the fold is thearea when you land on a website,
whether on a desktop or on amobile that when you land on it
(03:17):
you don't have to scroll, soeverything you see front and
center without having to swipeup or scroll.
That is above the fold and thatshould tell the entire story of
your brand or what you'retrying to sell to them right
away.
This is a great place to haveyour best images, or if you are
promoting something, if you'reinto the fall season or you're
(03:38):
into the Christmas season,whatever you're promoting,
whatever you're wanting to drivebusiness towards, should be
right there, front and center,above the fold, when someone
lands on your website.
So they know very clearly whatyou're selling and you need to
have your imagery so that theycan imagine themselves using the
product.
Just having a photo of yourcandles with the background
(04:02):
removed is not going to cut it.
That is not going to give thema clear image of how they're
going to be using your products.
So spend some time, maybe evena little bit of money, on your
photography.
Now we actually just did aworkshop inside.
When I say we, chad just did aworkshop inside of the inner
circle for our members where heshows you how he does our
(04:25):
photography and that includesjust using your simple iPhone or
any phone nowadays can do yourphotography and how he edits all
of that inside of Canva so thatyou can have very consistent
images.
One of the things that kind ofis a pet peeve of mine when I'm
looking at websites for peopleis that they you know they have
(04:48):
five, 10 different candles ofthe exact same collection and
they've taken images of all ofthem.
But some are closer, some arefarther back, so the depth on
them isn't consistent, sothey're kind of all over the
place and the lighting is goingto be a little bit off.
So work on having consistentphotography on your homepage as
well and throughout your website.
So that is number two.
(05:09):
That's going to be that greatproduct photography.
Your photos do matter.
They need to be clear, theyneed to be well lit.
You have to have highresolution.
You can't just do one angle.
Think about taking images fromthe front, from the side, from
the top.
Think about taking images fromthe front, from the side, from
the top.
If you have a lid, you know,have the lid on to show them
that it comes with the lid.
Have the lid off so that theycan see what it looks like
(05:29):
without it.
If they're candles, candlesshould be lit.
I would have a flame on there.
Now we don't go in light all ofour candles just for the
photography.
That is part of what we doinside of our editing.
So if you're part of the innercircle, you can come in there
and see how we edit all of ourphotos.
Um, it makes it really easy todo.
You can do that just inside ofCanva or Photoshop or any of
those other softwares.
(05:50):
I like to use Canva.
I'm not too tech savvy, butCanva is all that we need to
have there.
Um, now your images should bearound um 2000 pixels wide, but
under uh 500 kilobytes uh, asfar as size goes.
Now, the reason for that is wewant them to load as fast as
possible, so your images, ifthey're too large, are going to
(06:10):
slow down your website.
So you want to have the clarityand you want them to have high
resolution, but you want thatfile size to be smaller so you
can dive into.
Shopify has plenty of resourceson their website just about
product photography and whattheir recommendations are to
have the best speeds for yourwebsite, and the photography
(06:32):
plays a huge part in that.
You also want to always makesure that you are using alt text
, so alt text is great foraccessibility For people that
can't see your images.
The alt text will help them,through technologies, to know
what is on those pages.
So it is pretty important.
It's very important to us tohave the alt text spelled out.
(06:54):
It's also going to be reallygood for your SEO.
That's going to raise your SEOscore higher so that you are
then going to be ranking higheron Google results, all right.
So number three is going to beyour product pages need to build
confidence.
So this is where your customersdecide if they're buying.
You got to make sure that everyproduct page has full details
(07:16):
scent notes, burn times,ingredients, size or size
variance.
If you're selling multiple,obviously you need to have your
prices on there.
You need to add a story or avibe to the scent, right.
You need to connect, not justvisually, but you have to kind
of tell the story about thatscent.
We're selling candles, right,and people aren't able to smell
(07:38):
them through your website, butwe got to get as close as
possible to that.
So your product pages, whereyou're going to have those
descriptions, is going to bereally important.
You're also going to want toturn on your product reviews.
That is going to build some ofthe trust factors on those
product pages.
Social proof is going to go along ways.
(07:58):
If I went on a website, I don'tsee any social proof.
I don't know if anyone's everbought from this company before.
It's going to make it me prettyleery about that brand or that
specific product.
All right.
So number four is going to beeasy site navigation.
So now don't overthink yourmenu.
Oftentimes I will see thesemassive menus on the top of
(08:21):
websites.
Keep it really simple.
Uh, have you know a homepage?
You know, or home button?
Now, if you're building aShopify, the logo will be at the
top and it's just commonknowledge these days that if you
click on that logo, that'sgoing to take you back to the
homepage of a website.
So don't have a separate tabthat says home to take you back
(08:42):
home.
People know now just to clickon the logo at the top of any
website or on any website pageand that's going to take you
back to the main page.
So no need to put a home tab onthe menu of your website.
But you do want to have a shop,you do want to have an about?
Uh, you do want to have FAQs?
Now, I'd put those at thebottom.
I would also put a contact atthe bottom.
(09:03):
People want to make sure thatthey are able to reach you if
they have any problems or anyissues.
Um, they may also just havequestions in advance.
So having that FAQ is going tobe important.
Now what I like to do is, undermy shop, I then start breaking
down the collection so I don't,across the top have, let's say,
spring, summer, fall, winter,custom private label.
(09:26):
I don't have all of ourdifferent collections across the
top.
I will have shop.
I keep our homepage very, veryclean.
You click on shop and then it'sgoing to drop down and then
it's going to start breaking itup into collections.
Or they can shop by scent.
There's a lot of different waysthey can shop our website, but
when they're first on ourwebsite, you don't want to
overwhelm them and make it looklike there's too many options
(09:48):
that they're going to get lost,right?
You want to make it very, veryclean to shop.
So the other thing that you cando is add additional product
types.
So we have under shop we havecandles, but we also have wax
melts and then we have roomsprays, and so we don't have all
of those across the top becauseit would just make it very
overwhelming.
So under shop is where we startbreaking it down.
(10:10):
Number five is going to bemobile.
First design Now, with ourbrand, garza and Beacon, 85% of
our visitors visit us on mobile,so they are on their cell
phones when they are coming toour website.
So we have to think aboutbuilding this website out that
is mobile friendly.
So you're going to want to havebuttons that are the right size
(10:30):
, that they're tappable.
You know, when you're inShopify building out your
website, you can choosedifferent size options,
different sizes for your buttons, different sizes for your text.
Be sure that you preview yourwebsite on mobile and make sure
that that is what you care aboutmore than the desktop version.
So that's one thing to thinkabout is we build our website on
(10:54):
our computer, on our desktop,on our laptop.
Maybe even some of you will dolike on an iPad, something with
a larger screen, but use thepreview that Shopify has is at
the very top in the right corner.
When you're building out yourwebsite, it's going to have what
looks like an image of acomputer monitor and then a cell
phone next to it.
That gives you the twodifferent viewing options.
Click on the cell phone andthen you'll see what it's going
(11:16):
to look like on a mobile device.
And if there's things that needto be changed, there's a few
things that you can do, separatefor mobile versus desktop, and
one of those is going to be yourimages.
So for our product images, weuse the same.
We use the same for both,because we're using, like,
square images for our store, butwith your, with your hero
(11:37):
images, which is like the frontpage of your website at the top,
we will have two differentimages.
So it will allow us to use aimage that is desktop specific
and then an image that is mobilespecific, and you're going to
want that.
If you have a hero image thathas a lot going on, if you're
going to be having text on there, be sure you look at it on
mobile version to make sure thattext on the desktop isn't going
(12:00):
off the side or running off thebottom.
So some things there to thinkabout.
So your buttons should betappable.
You should be able to click onthem just fine, not that they're
too small.
Where you got to, you got totab, just right.
You want to make sure that theycan tab it really easy.
The text should be large enoughthat it's easy to read, and
then your checkout should bereally easy to go through as
well.
Oftentimes people don't go andlook at the design of the
(12:22):
checkout page.
They just leave it at thedefault.
There's a lot of things thatcan kind of be overwhelming
there, so just think aboutmaking it mobile first optimized
.
So, number six we want to set upour payment and our shipping
properly.
So you want to make sure thatyou're accepting multiple
payment options credit cards,paypal, apple Pay and you also
want to have clear shippingterms.
(12:44):
Now, for us, the way we do itis we do free shipping at $99
and we have that as a banner,and then we also do $5 flat rate
.
It's just we're competing withAmazon, we're competing with
Macy's and all these other bigbox stores that do a free
shipping threshold, so we wantto be sure that we're
competitive in there.
If I'm selling someone my $18candle, if I'm selling them an
(13:08):
$18 candle and it's shipping toCalifornia, they're not going to
want to spend $12 to get itthere.
They're just not.
So what am I going to do?
I, california, they're notgoing to want to spend $12 to
get it there.
They're just not.
So what am I going to do?
I'm going to eat some of thatby offering $5 flat rate.
If you're part of the innercircle, I walk you through
exactly how we have that set up.
In fact, if you're in the innercircle, we have an entire
walkthrough of how I build outour Shopify store.
(13:28):
So if you're interested in theinner circle, just the workshop
on building a Shopify storewould be certainly worth it as
well, and, of course, thephotography one that we spoke of
earlier.
But make sure that you haveplenty of payment options for
people, so credit cards, paypal,apple Pay.
You need to have your shippingclearly defined.
If you're charging them fullprice for shipping, that's
(13:51):
probably hindering a lot of yoursales.
So just keep that in mind.
And if you are going to have athreshold where you get to free
shipping, make sure you'readvertising it, because that's a
great promotion.
You don't want to bury thedetails, you want to be just
clear, upfront.
I like to have that banner onthe top of my homepage, so when
someone lands on my website, itsays what the free shipping
(14:12):
threshold is.
So while they're looking aroundand shopping, they know right
away what that number they needto get to if they want to take
advantage of that free shippingthreshold.
Number seven is going to belegal pages that build trust.
Oftentimes people will forgetto complete their privacy policy
as terms of service, yourrefund policy, your shipping
(14:35):
policy.
Shopify has templates to getyou started.
Don't skip out on doing these,not just because they protect
you legally, but because theysignal to your customers that
you're a real business.
If I go to a website and when Iscroll to the bottom, I want to
make sure they have a contactso I can reach out to them if
they, if I have any issues whenI'm buying from them.
But if I don't see a refundpolicy or their terms of service
(14:58):
or privacy policy, that's goingto concern me that they haven't
taken the steps that mostbusinesses do take, so don't be
one of those.
That doesn't complete all ofthese different things.
Again, shopify has all thesefor you, where you just fill in
the blanks and you can justupdate it according to what your
policies are, so that's very,very easy to do.
(15:19):
Number eight is going to be tohave an email signup and a
branded email platform.
I actually talked about theemail platforms in week five of
this series, that you need to goout and get a email service
provider, such as like a Googleworkspace, so that you can have
an email address such as helloat yourbrandcom.
You don't want to haveyourbrandatgmailcom right, so,
(15:43):
for instance with mine.
It would be info atwithoutbrandcom or info at
garznetbeaconcom.
I don't want it to be likegarznetbeaconcandocompany at
gmailcom.
It's going to build trust byhaving a business email address.
You're going to want to havethat, and then you want to start
collecting emails right away,have a pop-up where you are
(16:06):
collecting people's emailaddresses.
Generally you're going to dothis in exchange for a discount
and the discount has to belucrative.
I would start out at a minimumof 25% off their first order so
that they give you their emailaddress.
And then you're going to wantto have your automations already
set up and running.
So you need to have at leastone email in that welcome
(16:27):
sequence because that's going tobe the email that's sending
them that first order discount.
Now you can use Klaviyo.
You can also use other types ofautomated email sequences, but
you can just use Shopify.
You can just use Shopify'semail.
It has gotten so much betterover the last couple of years to
where you can.
(16:48):
Now, in fact, we do anotherworkshop inside of the inner
circle where it's all aboutemail marketing and we set up
like seven different emails.
So you have that initial emailthat goes out once someone gives
you their email address andthen the next day we send them
an email that talks about oh,come and follow us on social
media.
There's another one that isgoing to be set up to
automatically send out emailsfor whenever they make a
(17:10):
purchase, so that you can startcollecting reviews.
So make sure that you have allof your email signups that pop
up on your website ready to goand that you have that branded
email address that they're goingto be sending or they're going
to be receiving those emailsfrom.
So that's going to be importantfor you to have on your website
as well.
Now on to number nine SEOfriendly, story driven product
(17:32):
descriptions are going to bereally important.
Of course, because of SEO, youwant to make sure that you have
a keyword rich productdescription.
Now, we did talk about theproduct description a little bit
earlier on when we talked aboutthe product pages, but the
descriptions themselves are soimportant.
This is such a big one.
Your product description shouldactually paint a picture.
(17:52):
Just think about it that way.
Don't just tell people what thescent notes are going to be.
Talk about how it feels, whatit's going to remind people of
who they would be buying it for.
Use your keywords naturally,such as soy candles or gift for
blank, but you got to keep ithuman.
You can use AI, chat, gpt, youcan use assistants to write your
(18:16):
product descriptions, but don'tjust copy and paste those in.
It's not going to fly, it's notgoing to work.
People know when something'swritten that has a human element
to it or if it's all just AIwritten.
So make sure that it'scompletely natural.
Still, you don't want to dowhat's called keyword stuff and
that just means throwing a tonof keywords.
(18:37):
You know I don't want to say anatural candle, highly scented
candle, a candle for her, candlefor him, candle for them Like.
You don't want to just throwall these keywords into a
product description.
That's just not how it works.
I have videos on SEO that youcan go back and check out as
well.
That's one of the biggestdrivers for the business we
receive is making sure that wehave SEO optimized product
(19:00):
descriptions.
Make sure that they tell a story.
When they click on theirproduct, they're already
interested in it.
Now the story that you tell onthat product page in that
description should sell it.
They're interested in it.
Now you got to sell it to themand that's where you do that.
All right.
So number 10 is custom domainand trust signal.
So you got to have a customdomain, you've got to own a
(19:21):
website.
So for us, likeGarcinetBeaconcom or
WithoutBrandcom those are theones that we are selling candles
on you don't want it to be likeGarcinetBeaconmyshopifycom,
because that's what it's goingto be.
When you first open up aShopify store, they're going to
give you a domain, but you wantto go out and buy a domain and
(19:42):
connect them so that it takesout that myshopifycom out of
that website address.
Then you're also going to wantto have a lot of trust badges on
your website, not just at thecheckout but also on your
website.
The trust badges are going tobe things such as secure
checkout or fast shipping oreasy returns, handmade goods all
(20:06):
of those that you'll see onalmost every website.
That generally going to bethroughout the website, but
usually towards the bottom.
There they're going to be, likeyou know, circle icons.
Have them on your homepage,have them on your product pages
and also have them at checkout.
You just want to keep reassuringthe customer on your website
that doesn't know you or yourbrand that this is a safe place
to shop.
(20:26):
So make sure you're goingthrough the extra steps of
adding those to your websitethat doesn't know you or your
brand, that this is a safe placeto shop.
So make sure you're goingthrough the extra steps of
adding those to your website.
You also want to include anabout page with a photo and a
story, just so that they feelmore comfortable buying from you
.
In this day and age, we arevery cautious of who we are
spending money with, making surethat, whether the story aligns
or the mission aligns, or thevalues, whatever it might be.
(20:53):
So talk about you, talk aboutyour brand, talk about your why.
That's going to incentivizepeople to.
It's going to build more trustwith them so that they're going
to feel confident in theirpurchase.
Now let's go over some bonustips for you Now.
If you want to get our list ofour top 10 here that I've shared
today, grab that in thecomments below.
So if you want to go the extramile, here's a few ideas.
Add that announcement bar atthe top of your page to do
(21:15):
either free shipping, promos,new launches, whatever you have
going on.
Just throw that up there.
It should be on everyone'shomepage, for sure.
You can also usually put thaton your product pages or,
depending on the theme andShopify you're using, you can
put it throughout your websiteas well.
So having that scrollingannouncement bar can be really
handy.
Another thing is your Instagramfeed.
(21:35):
If you are using Instagram,then you can actually have your
Instagram feed filter into yourwebsite so that people will
build trust off of knowing, oh,they are a legit brand.
I see people posting onInstagram and showing up right
onto their website, so that'sgoing to be a really good trust
factor and it's also going toshow like customers using your
products but they're reallygoing to like.
(21:57):
Another one is going to be setup abandoned cart emails.
We get a lot of sales fromabandoned cart emails.
It's very easy to just set itup and forget about it.
You can do it in Shopifydirectly.
You can also do it in Klaviyoor whatever email service
provider you're using.
Essentially, what it is issomeone is on your website,
they're shopping around, theyput stuff in their cart and then
(22:18):
they decide not to buy rightnow.
Whether it was because of theshipping was too high, whether
they want to shop around otherpages, or maybe they're just
unsure they leave your website.
You should then have an emailthat's going to trigger to go
out to them saying hey, comeback.
You know these things are stillin your cart.
Believe me, it works.
We get a lot of sales from ourabandoned cart emails working
(22:39):
for us.
And another tip for you considerhaving just a basic live chat
tool.
Now, that doesn't mean you haveto sit there at your website
all day long.
You can have a live chat tool.
In fact, shopify has that.
What's called Shopify inbox iswhat they have to, where someone
can start a conversation withyou there or ask questions.
A little contact form will popup.
(23:00):
They can ask a question andthen you'll get a notification
and you can hop on there torespond to them.
That's going to help save a lotof sales.
When people aren't sure aboutthey're going to have questions
about all kinds of things,whether it's about the scent or
whether it's about where youship to.
People are going to have lotsof questions as they're shopping
, and if there's an easy way forthem to get the answer from you
(23:21):
, then having that is going tobe fantastic.
And then what I do is, whenpeople ask questions through our
contact, I then will add themto our FAQs so that the next
person shopping on our websiteif they have the same question,
they might be able to find theanswer under the FAQs, which
would then slow down the amountof times they have to reach out
(23:41):
to us directly.
It gets them an answer rightaway and, hopefully, on to
building out their cart andmaking an order with us.
Hopefully this episode has beenhelpful for you.
Now, generally speaking onShopify, shopify tells us that
the average conversion rate is3%.
So meaning, for every hundredpeople that go to your website,
(24:02):
3% should convert into customers.
Now, this is going to be coldtraffic.
This isn't going to be likeyour repeat customers coming
back over and over again.
Cold traffic should convert atabout three percent.
If you're doing better thanthat or worse than that, let me
know in the comments below whatyour conversion rate is.
It's an easy metrics to seeright inside of the admin of
your Shopify store.
(24:22):
Also, don't forget, I have alist of all of these things to
do a checklist for you in thecomments below.
It's completely free.
You can download that from thelink below.
If you have any questions,reach out to us.
We love to help you out alongthe way.
Put your questions in thecomments below as well, and next
week we're going to dive intobuilding out some other
marketing strategies for thisnew brand and I'll show you a
(24:44):
little bit of sneak peek ofexactly what we're doing to
start creating a buzz aroundthis new brand.
So thanks for tuning in today.
Have a fantastic rest of yourday.
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